From fertility anxiety to breastfeeding tips, few apps have embedded themselves as deeply into modern Chinese family life as Baby Tree. Known in Mandarin as 宝宝树 (Bǎobǎo Shù, literally “Baby Tree”), the parenting platform has long branded itself as a warm, science-based companion for China’s expectant parents and new mothers. But recent controversies over its content — including eyebrow-raising “advice” about women’s bodies — have thrust Baby Tree into a wider debate about gender norms, digital health responsibility and the uneasy marriage between tech, commerce and reproduction in today’s China.
Founded in 2007, Baby Tree emerged during a period of rapid urbanisation and digitisation, when young Chinese parents were increasingly turning away from elder relatives and toward smartphones for guidance. The app offers pregnancy tracking, childcare advice, expert Q&As, community forums and a vast e-commerce ecosystem selling everything from prenatal supplements to strollers. At its peak, Baby Tree claimed more than 200 million registered users, with tens of millions of monthly active users — a scale that made it one of China’s most influential “maternal and infant” platforms.
Ownership matters here. Baby Tree Group listed in Hong Kong in 2018, and its shareholders over time have included powerful tech and manufacturing players. E-commerce giant Alibaba became a strategic investor, while Chinese dairy conglomerate Beingmate — a major infant formula producer — also acquired a significant stake. This blend of parenting advice, big data and baby-product retail has always raised questions about 冲突利益 (chōngtú lìyì, conflict of interest): where does medical guidance end and salesmanship begin?
Those concerns came roaring back into the spotlight after a recent South China Morning Post report highlighted backlash against advice circulating on Baby Tree aimed at expectant fathers. Among the most criticised claims was the suggestion that breastfeeding would make women’s breasts “larger” — a statement many users described as misleading at best and objectifying at worst. Fathers posting on the platform complained that such language reduced women’s bodies to sexualised assets and trivialised the physical and emotional realities of pregnancy and lactation.
The controversy quickly spilled onto Chinese social media, where critics accused Baby Tree of peddling outdated, male-centric views under the guise of “science popularisation” (科普, kēpǔ). Feminist commentators pointed out that Chinese women already face intense bodily scrutiny during pregnancy and postpartum confinement, known as 坐月子 (zuò yuèzi), a traditional practice that mixes rest, ritual and rigid norms about female behaviour. In this context, even seemingly small digital messages can reinforce damaging expectations about how women should look, recover and please others.
Baby Tree responded by saying the advice had been misunderstood and that content would be reviewed. But the damage was done, not least because this was far from the company’s first controversy. In recent years, the platform has been criticised over data privacy, as apps collecting intimate health information fall under growing regulatory scrutiny. China’s Personal Information Protection Law now treats data about reproduction and health as highly sensitive, yet parenting apps remain lucrative data goldmines for advertisers, insurers and consumer brands.
The timing could hardly be worse for missteps. Beijing is now actively pushing childbirth through subsidies, propaganda and workplace reforms, as the country’s fertility rate sinks to historic lows. Apps like Baby Tree sit at the heart of this demographic push, shaping how pregnancy, motherhood and even fatherhood are imagined. Increasingly, young Chinese couples — especially urban women — are sceptical. Many resent digital platforms that echo state pressure while glossing over the real costs of childcare, career penalties and unequal domestic labour.
Baby Tree’s ambition has always been to be more than an app: a “family ecosystem” that grows alongside China’s children. But as users become more educated, digitally savvy and politically aware about gender equality (性别平等, xìngbié píngděng), they are demanding more than cute avatars and shopping discounts. They want accuracy, respect and accountability.
The Baby Tree saga illustrates a broader truth about China’s parenting-tech sector. When advice, commerce, ideology and intimate life collide, trust is fragile. And once parents — mothers and fathers alike — feel that an app is shaping bodies and beliefs as much as babies, the backlash can grow faster than any child ever will.
Do we really need an app — backed by baby formula makers and e-commerce giants — to tell us how to become parents? China, my dear, you’ve gone a little too far this time.
Spicy Auntie has no problem with technology. I love a good tracker, a smart reminder, even a neatly organised Q&A. But when an app like Baby Tree starts positioning itself as the emotional midwife, moral compass and biological oracle for millions of families, we should all pause and ask: who exactly is raising our children here — parents, grandparents, doctors… or shareholders?
Let’s be honest. Parenting existed long before push notifications, affiliate links and “expert advice” conveniently placed next to shopping carts. In China, babies were raised through extended families, communities, neighbourhood aunties, trial and error, and yes, plenty of unsolicited wisdom. Not all of it was good, but at least it wasn’t sponsored. Now we’ve outsourced confidence, instinct and even common sense to platforms quietly controlled by infant-formula manufacturers — the same industry that has spent decades convincing parents that mothers’ bodies are never quite good enough on their own.
And then comes the so-called “advice.” Breastfeeding will make women’s breasts larger? Are we parenting or running a late-night variety show for male fantasies? This is the kind of nonsense that gets dressed up as 科普 (kēpǔ, “science popularisation”), while recycling old, tired gender scripts: women as bodies, men as observers, babies as consumers. Auntie is not amused.
China’s fertility crisis looms in the background of all this, and the response seems to be: more apps, more metrics, more pressure. Track your ovulation. Track your bump. Track your baby’s sleep. Track your emotions — but only the acceptable ones. Meanwhile, the real issues remain untouched: work cultures that punish mothers, housing costs that terrify young couples, and domestic labour that still magically “belongs” to women.
What worries Auntie most is not the bad advice itself — bad advice has always existed — but the authority granted to it. Apps feel neutral, scientific, inevitable. Algorithms speak with confidence. And when they are intertwined with commerce, they don’t just inform; they nudge, they normalise, they sell. Parenting becomes a product, anxiety becomes a revenue stream, and uncertainty is monetised.
Let me say this plainly: parents do not need an app to love their children. They need time, support, truthful medical information, and the freedom to make mistakes without being shamed by comment sections or data dashboards. China does not need digital nannies sponsored by formula brands. It needs trust in families, respect for women’s bodies, and policies that make raising a child less punishing — emotionally and economically.
So no, my friends. We don’t need Baby Tree to grow our babies. What we need is a little less tech paternalism, a lot more honesty, and the courage to unplug — just enough — to remember that parenting is human, messy, imperfect, and absolutely not a business model.